


Sparring Lessons

by Embracingtheplotbunnies



Series: New Targaryen Dynasty [10]
Category: game of thrones
Genre: Battle for the Dawn, F/M, Grief, Sparring, dany centric, introspective, it kind of got out of hand, it wasn't supposed to be this long, non graphic character injury, one mention of depression, some fluff some angst, time jumps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 02:32:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11393541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Embracingtheplotbunnies/pseuds/Embracingtheplotbunnies
Summary: Explaining the role that late night sparring sessions play in Jon and Dany's lives, before and after the Battle for the Dawn.





	Sparring Lessons

**Author's Note:**

> This oneshot has already been posted on Tumblr, so if it looks familiar you probably already read it there. It's meant to be a little different from the other stories in this series; it's meant to be a bit rougher (mostly because it was supposed to be a list of headcanons but it went out of control). 
> 
> Basically written to justify how Jon teaching Dany to spar could happen without it being out of character (because personally I think that would be really cute). 
> 
> Also written for Day 1 of my Game of Thrones Season 7 countdown.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own Game of Thrones. All rights to HBO and GRR Martin
> 
> Enjoy! Now I'm going to actually figure out how you make series on this website...

Up until she saw the first wight, Dany had never given a thought to ever needing to learn self defense. From a young age she was taught that sword fighting was for men; women had other weapons to get ahead in the world. Yes, she’d seen amazing women who could handle a bow and arrow or a sword as easily as a man could but it wasn’t something she was particularly interested in. Jorah, Grey Worm, and Daario (and Ser Barristan, while he had lived) fought her battles on the battlefield while she made alliances behind closed doors before a roaring fire. She trusted her Queensguard with her life and trusted them to defend her should the need arise. 

But when she saw the wight she wasn’t thinking about her Queensguard. When it looked at her for the first time and she saw death in its eyes she didn’t wait for one of her Unsullied to slit its putrefying throat. They seemed miles away-and she felt alone and trapped with this nauseating creature that she was sure would kill her as soon as she turned her back. 

She wanted a sword or a dagger or something to defend herself with, because she felt she had gone beyond the point of rescue-even though the wight never touched her. Jon got what little information he could-a few places she’d never heard of and a few numbers that made her stomach churn-before he plunged Longclaw into the…thing’s chest. 

She hadn’t really been in danger then, surrounded by half a hundred men with spears topped with dragonglass while she sat on the throne safely out of harm’s way, but she knew that sometime she would be. If Jon said there were more she was inclined to believe him-and sooner or later she’d be on the battlefield, fighting against them just as everyone else did. She had no doubt she’d fight on dragonback…but what if something happened? What if she and Drogon were somehow separated? 

What if, the next time they came for her, she didn’t have her Queensguard? She’d be powerless, defenseless-and she didn’t want to die like that. 

Looking back on it, she could have gone to anyone for instruction-the Red Keep had dozens of masters-at-arms and men from the Night’s Watch still passed in and out of the castle at odd hours of the day and night. Any one of them could have taught her rudimentary sparring skills, just for that ultimate worst case scenario-the one she didn’t like to think about, even in her nightmares. So what exactly had driven her to Jon Snow? 

Perhaps the same thing that had prevented him from leaving King’s Landing the day after her coronation, like he said he would. He was the closest friend she’d ever had, aside from Tyrion-somehow she’d allowed him to slip through her defenses and her life was slowly expanding to include him. She sat with him at mealtimes, he accompanied her out into King’s Landing when she wanted to go exploring, and they invariably ended up spending their nights in one of the castle’s many solars. At first they would talk strategy, usually with Tyrion or one of her other advisors-but then inevitably they would find themselves alone and the conversation would turn to other things, like their families or their pasts. Never their futures; those were still far too uncertain. 

She’d never known that a man could be a friend that way, that she could have a friendship with him that revolved around more than just attraction. The attraction was still there of course, especially when she convinced him to wear tighter shirts that showed off his toned stomach…but it wasn’t blind lust the way it had been with Daario. 

He was the only one who’d ever made her laugh so hard she accidentally spat out the wine she’d been drinking (and luckily he’d been the only one around). Which was funny because most people didn’t see that side of him. He smiled more when he was around her, and she counted every one of those smiles as a personal victory. 

If she hadn’t known better, she might have called it love. 

She didn’t think about it, really-one night she found herself outside the door to Jon’s bedroom and she found herself asking him if he wouldn’t mind teaching her rudimentary sparring skills. 

He accepted, of course. So they went down to the training room in the middle of the night, he outfitted her with a sword, and…she was terrible at it, as she’d figured she would be. At first she was surprised at how many blocks and parries she managed to land-but then she realized that Jon was just going easy on her. Once he stopped she didn’t come close to landing another strike for the rest of the night-but she was surprised to find she didn’t mind. There was something comforting about just having the sword in her hand and a few easy strikes on hand, to know that she wouldn’t be completely defenseless. It felt even better when he gave her one of his obsidian daggers because a sword would be too conspicuous; it was barely longer than her hand but it fit perfectly in the side of her boot. 

That first night they circled each other carefully, neither one willing to get too close and break the boundaries that they had to adhere to in the daytime, where there were things expected of them and roles to play. 

The next time they sparred another couple of weeks had gone by and she had a free night-and soon it became a weekly (and then a nightly) routine. She didn’t tell anyone else about where she was going or what she was doing; she would just meet Jon in the training room and they would go at it until one of them decided they had to stop-usually Jon because Dany was panting heavily or had cut herself somehow. 

Once or twice on their journey north he got Arya to swap in for him. Arya was a brutal teacher-she showed Dany no mercy and gave her no praise, but Dany found that her skills improved slowly but surely. Her relationship with Jon’s youngest sister improved too; they smiled at each other more during the day, because they were privy to a secret that very few knew about. 

It didn’t take long for Jon to start correcting her grip or her stance, guiding her into different positions deftly and carefully. It was always strictly professional, but every so often their skin would accidentally touch. Soon Dany began to look forward to those moments when every nerve ending in her skin would light up and they would both pull away, a little embarrassed…until they got used to it and started prolonging the contact, until it almost seemed purposeful. 

There was something almost magical about those nights she spent with him, alone in the training room with nothing but the low drone of his voice to keep her company, his sword a flash of light in the corner of her vision. But she always felt ultra aware of his presence, even as she got blisters on her hands and bruises on her body from all the times she fell down or cut herself. 

There was something deferential and tender about it, but also incredibly sexy-and she was never quite sure what to make of it. She knew lust, and this wasn’t it. It was something deeper and more meaningful, and it frightened her because she had never felt that way about anyone before. She would have to marry sooner or later for convenience and it was best not to go getting attached to someone who so obviously didn’t want the responsibility that having her came with-but sometimes she was annoyed with how fast her heart would beat when she saw him as though she was still an innocent girl, given to crushes and grand romantic gestures. 

The first time she ever saw him shirtless was after one of those meetings, when she forgot her cape and went back down to the room to get it-only to find Jon sitting in the middle of the floor with his shirt off, polishing his sword until it shone. 

When he saw her his face turned red and he scrambled to his feet almost comically. “Your Grace.” He looked down at his chest and she tried not to stare because she didn’t think Daario had those many muscles. “I was hot.” 

“Obviously.” She shrugged, like it was no big deal. It shouldn’t be; it wasn’t like he was the first man she’d seen shirtless. 

When she slept that night she dreamt of undressing him. 

Then when she finally did, the night before their world fell apart, she realized that the reality of it was so much better. Her imagination hadn’t even begun to do him justice. 

 

In the end, she killed three wights and cut off more appendages than she cared to count in hand to hand combat. She killed more on Drogon’s back, but she was extremely proud of her three. Of course, Jon and the others had to save her more times than she could count-but she managed to not be a complete liability when she wasn’t on dragonback. 

She killed only one White Walker, one of the Night King’s lieutenants-and that was only because it was distracted by Jon.  
Her little dagger served her well, before the Night King broke it. Seeing it snap in half almost hurt her physically, after all they had gone through together-it almost hurt more than the moment the Night King’s sword cut into her stomach. 

 

For the next few months she didn’t do any sparring. She spent nearly a month in and out of the Cave of Roots, waiting for her body to heal. She could barely walk for almost two and a half weeks. She went half mad with grief over Drogon. She went back to King’s Landing without Jon and ruled and pretended she was happy. She threw herself into project after project and meeting after meeting and pretended it filled the hole inside of her-the hole created by Drogon and exacerbated by Jon, because in a strange way it felt as if by staying in Winterfell he had cut himself off from her forever. Tyrion was forever warning her not to overwork herself, but sometimes she wondered if it would be better just to work herself to death. 

Tyrion called it depression. She didn’t care what it was called, or even what it did. Why had she never realized how lonely ruling was, how everyone she cared about moved on with their lives and she was trapped in her throne room day in and day out going through the motions of actually making a difference? 

One night she went down to the sparring room in a fit of rage and broke three of the training swords Jon had used before Tyrion realized what she was doing and stopped her. "You’ll get over him," he said. "It’s just hard right now."

He didn't realize that it wasn’t just Jon. It was Jon and Drogon and all of the death and the fact that she didn’t have anything to live for anymore-she had her throne, her armies, and her ships but it didn’t make her happy. Where was the life on the edge that had characterized her life as a conqueror? It was a million things at once that she couldn’t handle-and Jon was only the tip of the iceberg. 

She felt so young and yet so old at the same time. But she worked at it, day by day, first to find meaning in the small things and then-when that was easy again-to rule justly and compassionately. She never went back to the training room. 

And then Jon came back. 

 

Now they aren’t the only ones that use the training room. All of their children learned the basics of self defense, cycling in and out on a daily basis. Their oldest daughter, Rhaenyra, took a shine to sword fighting; for her, and for Jon, it was a way to unwind after a long day or distract the mind during a particularly tricky diplomatic situation. When Rhaenyra was younger they would spar for hours sometimes, until somehow they both ended up on the floor and he would tickle her until she cried and raced back upstairs so Dany would read her a story and make her a cup of warm milk. 

Dany never got used sparred on a regular basis. Jon did, either with the children or one of his friends or a member of the Queensguard-he feels restless when he's idle for too long and sparring allows him to keep his strength up. But every so often, at night when he awakes in a cold sweat, she'll light the candle next to their bed and pull on a robe. “I’ll meet you down there.”

They'll spar for hours. He'll always beat her in every single match-except for one or two a night that he lets her win, to keep things interesting. She's never been good at it but sometimes the exertion is all they need to keep the nightmares away; after a while they'll sometimes collapse on the floor, exhausted, and fall asleep on the tile. 

After a while, she stopped carrying a dagger with her wherever she went. She's never had to use it on someone anyway.  
But they still have their sleepless nights. 

 

Whenever the children went down for breakfast in the mornings and didn’t see their parents, the training room was always the first place they looked. At first they didn’t understand why-they didn’t understand the mark on Dany’s wrist or the scars on her stomach and Jon’s chest; they didn’t understand the three rosebushes outside the castle window. They didn’t understand the Baratheon flags that Dany still kept in the attic because she could never quite get rid of them. 

But when they got older they did, and then Jon and Dany often woke up to smiles instead of grumbling about why they couldn’t just wait until they got back to bed so they could fall asleep. 

They never understood all of the scars and all of the stories, and that was the way Dany wanted it. They never saw their mother spar, ever. But she knew there was some necessity to it, in case that worst case scenario happened again-so she learned the basics, just in case. 

She always remembered the basics.


End file.
